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2005 News Archives
=2005 News Archives= 12/19 - 1/02/06 *With the Holidays, some Linden Lab things will be delayed or unavailable. Class Payments will be delayed untill December 28th, Jesse Linden is asking for people to continue sending in their payment requests and he will get to them when he returns (on the 28th). Also phone support will be gone from December 22nd to December 26th as staff will be out of the office, however e-mail and in-world support will still be available. *Version 1.8.0(9) has been released. Contains a few bug fixes and some changes to the UI. *The SecondLife.com website has been updated to a new design. It looks spiffy, check it out! You can post comments, suggestions, complaints, and love poems to Bub Linden here. *The much debated Developer Incentives will be phased out by March 31st 2006. The Developer Incentives were originaly made to reward the creative developers of SL. However due to its ties with Dwell/Traffic, it has been seen as a double payment for those who already recieve higher-than-average funds, and not actualy do what it was intended. LL seeing that things weren't turning out as intended now plans to create other programs to actualy reward developers, such as the Developer Directory which is already being put together. In related news, the developer incentives for November have been released with the total payment coming to $11,722.36 USD split between 118 residents. *SL Help Radio is up and running, the station will be heard on Orientation Islands and Help Island. Residents who can't access those locations can listen to it in Ambleside (57, 103) which is Pathfinder's office. In the next month or so LL will decide if the Help Radio will be permenant or not based on feedback, if it's decided to keep it going more music will be needed. *PayPal has been temporarily removed as a registration option due to verification problems. You can still associate an account with PayPal after registration for payment, but currently sign ups are restricted to Credit Cards once more. No ETA has been given on when PayPal will be available again for registration. *Bo Linden has posted a link to an awesome map api and complete documentation! This api allows you to create a map like that seen on the front page of secondlife.com. With the documentation in hand you can edit it to do whatever you wish! The api is written in Javascript and you can customize the displaying to your hearts content. *Hippos! They're back with a vengence. With the introduction of the InfoHubs as replacements for Telehubs, hippos have also appeared with them. These great models created by Altruima Linden are part of an art project. This project is open to any resident to take a copy of a Hippo (a parent and/or a child) and decorate/change them as they see fit. You should be able to find the Hippos at any InfoHub (located on the map by the "i" icon) and once you finish your Hippo you can send it to Robin Linden, be sure to name them uniquely! 12/13 - 12/19 *Chris Linden has posted information about SL's outage and down time for December 12th. It seems SL was under attack of another self-replicating object, LL performed the normal protocol, but upon doing so the grid had a bit of trouble with objects being deleted randomly. So in consequence the grid was taken down and all simulators were "rolled back" (restored) to 5:30 pm. *Winners of the 2nd annual Winter Expo have been announced! The winter festival/expo will be going on from 12/14 to 12/21, see the thread for information on hosting events and such during these dates. For details on how to claim your plot see this post, if you have questions IM Nova Linden (Do not return objects owned by Nova!). *Karen Linden has posted some information on the on going texture issues. It seems LL has found a bug in which decompression of textures was not being handled as well as it could be. This fix will be in 1.8, which should be released tomorrow (December 13th). LL believes there may yet be another bug in objects reloading each time you see them, this could be caused by the "Interest List" (a list of objects to show to you), investigation is being done to determine if this is there is a problem in it and what can be done to fix it. *Linden Lab now has a special offer package up for bid on eBay. The package includes, your own private island (16 acres/65,526 sqm), 120 hours of design and building (assumed by Linden content team), a year of payed maintence fees, 20 Basic Accounts to give away, and 20 Premium accounts as well. This marks the first time Linden Lab has offered such a bid on eBay, some speculate it is a media device after the popularity Project Entropia got after a user bought a space station for 100,000$USD. Regardless, if it sounds like something you'd be interested, but want more details, you can email Wilder Linden. *To further distribute news and information in SL, LL is now using InfoNet in a large way. Lindens have added four new "channels", education, news, events, and volunteering. InfoNet terminals are being placed in several locations around the grid so LL can reach a wider audience with news and such than they can with just the forums. InfoNet is a resident created project and is developed by a company owned by Squagmire Stravinsky. If you have any ideas or tools that can further help LL get their information to the people, let em know! *The winning bids for LL's stage areas have been built and can be seen at their respected locations. Jesse Linden is offering bonuses for those who use the stages. Approved Instructors can earn up to 1250L$ per-class from December 9th to January 9th by submitting a picture of your class at one of the stages with your class payment claim. *Libby Linden is looking for free content for the upcoming Infohubs. PG content only, pretty much anything can be submited, household, fun, clothing, etc. Submission does not gaurentee distrobution, items will be rotated monthly. Residents may submit one item per month to Libby “Library�? Linden. Please include in the folder a picture and note card with a written description of the item. See the forum thread for more details. 12/7 - 12/13 *Today is the last day (sorry, should have posted this sooner) for the SecondLife Scripters Trade Show. If you're interested in seeing the latest and greatest in cool gadgets and scripts, head on over to the vehicle sims. The show ends at 12am on Monday (SLT/PST). *Version 1.8 is schedualed to be released on Tuesday, December 13th. The grid will be down from 6am to 12pm PST/SLT. This update contains a few new features, such as direct point to point teleportation (without telehubs), water ripple, improved classifieds, and some LSL functions. Untill it's release 1.8 is still in preview testing, if you wish to check it out and report any bugs you find check out the preview page. *A new forum attachments and classified ads policy has been enacted. This new policy gives classified ad posts a life of 6 months, afterwhich they'll be deleted, and forum attachments are now limited to 3mb. *A dynamic pricing scheme will be used for in-world classifieds. This scheme sorts ads by price payed for the ad, with the highest priced ads being listed on top and lowest on bottom. Residents can of course change the sort order from highest to lowest to instead be lowest to highest. There will also be no limit as to how many ads you can place or ads that can be placed overall to the Classifieds. The classifieds will also have a easier to use interface in 1.8. Many residents are unhappy with this change, wanting LL to use sorting by date instead. *The Developer Update for December 7th is out. This discusses topics of December 6th down time, 1.8 preview, and bugs that LL is looking into. *Preview version 1.8 is now out. You can download it and see what's coming in the future of SL. While this release isn't jammed packed with features, it does have some very important ones. Most notably P2PT (Point to Point Teleportation) has been added, this allows residents to directly teleport from one place to another on the map (and soon through scripting). Whether a plot can be teleported to or not is determined by if it has a Entry Point set and if it does, the entry point is where a resident will teleport too (if it doesn't, they will teleport close by). The Z vector is now also respected when teleporting/logging in to a location, meaning you will no longer fall from the sky if above a certain point. Other features inclued some land-access LSL function calls, so scripters can now make it easier for people to add or remove other residents from ban lists. Also a llMapDestination function which shows a specific point on the world map and a new water ripple effect have both been added. So if you're interested in helping the cause, test it out and report any bugs you find! *This year a tradition will continue with LL hosting another Winter Festival. Residents are being given the opportunity to build winter/ice/snow themed builds, in the fashion of Burning Life, if you're interested you can sign up here (must enter name by Wednesday, December 7th, at 2 pm PST/SLT), names will be selected via "blind drawing". Residents can also host winter themed events along side the official LL events, ideas should be submitted directly to Jeska Linden. The Winter Expo (as it is also known) is an annual "Holiday" in Second Life and this year the celebration will be from 12/14 – 12/21. 12/3 - 12/7 *SL (ALL of SL) will be down for maintenance on Tuesday 12/6, 4am - 12pm PST. This time will be used for software and hardware upgrades. All services will be effected by this down time, the grid, the website, the forums, LindeX, etc. *A Town Hall discussing SL Production and Project Management will be held on December 7th 3-4PM (PST). The TH will be hosted by Karen and Chris Linden, and will take place at the Stage at the 4-sim corners of Pooley, Brampton, Borrowdale and Seascale. The TH has seem to spurred from this thread. Early questions for those who won't be able to attend are being accepted in this thread. *Wilder Linden is looking for music for a new "Help Radio". Music should be originaly created works in which you own the rights too (or is free to distribute). The Help Radio will be a stream played on Orientation and Help Islands. Aside from resident created music, the radio will also have helpful tips and tricks given by Linden Lab staff. 20 tracks will be selected, winners will recieve plugs and recognition for their work. 10 files per-person of atleast 60 seconds, along with artist and title, and a short one second plug about the music (where to find more, etc.). Deadline for submission is Sunday, December 4th, 11:59pm SLT (PST). 11/21 - 12/3 *As promised Robin Linden is holding a meeting about the morphing of telehubs. The meeting will take place December 1st at 3 PM (PST) at the corners of Borrowdale, Pooley, Seascale and Brampton (Borrowdale 1,1). If you can not attend the meeting, you can email questions directly to Robin. Attendance is limited to a special group, talk to Robin or Jeska Linden if you'd like to join to attend. transcript was posted or kept. *A Development Update for December 1st has been posted. This update by Karen Linden gives some insight on what 1.7.4(8) is supposed to fix as well as some issues they're working on fixing for new updates. Issues that should be resolved in sims are a memory leak having to do with textures causing low time dilation and other lag, and regions appearing to have become "disconnected" from the rest of the grid. Issues that are being worked on, map generation being concurrent, client crashes with dragging textures and declining inventory offers, duplicated folders in inventory, and lag caused by opening the Find window. Look for these fixes and more to come in the future. *LL is bustin down on event listings with an update on rules for listings. Updates include rules on alts posting, mature content in PG events, and other general misuse of the list. *Jesse Linden is looking for Construction Bids for two new Instructor Stage Areas. The two sites of the stage areas will be: Pooley (255,2) and Oak Grove (170, 170). Winners of the bid will be awarded 25,000L$ (Pooley) and 15,000L$ (Oak Grove). The deadline has been pushed back to 5pm on Thursday, December 1st, the winners will be decided on by 5pm on Friday, December 2nd. The winners will have till December 9th to finish the builds. were announced in original thread on December 2nd. 12/1 - 12/2 *A rolling update will be in effect on December 1st. Sims will be restarting beginning at 8 am PST. This is a server only update and fixes a crash bug. (update finished within the day) 11/21 - 12/1 *Stipends have been delayed for Tuesday 29th, November. The issue will be fixed shortly and stipends will be paid asap. *Ginsu Linden has announced that future grid-wide attacks will result in information being passed on to law enforcement. Attacks that cause major down-time for SL also cause Real Life economy harm, to LL and to residents. *Linden Lab has listened to residents and Robin Linden has announced that Direct Teleporation (Point To Point Teleportation (p2pt)) will be coming "soon". Residents have voted for the two proposals on the vote page, with Proposal #89 being in the #6 slot of most wanted with 1030 votes. LL will be working on necessary changes to bring this wanted feature to us, changes such as permissions for land access and such. They are also taking into consideration residents who own land around telehubs and have suggested the idea of giving them double dwell for a period of time. The land the telehubs are now on may be converted into gathering areas of some kind. Discussion on the topic is going on in this thread and a meeting on the topic is planed for Thursday (December 1st) in the afternoon, details on the meeting will be posted in the forums soon. *Version 1.7.4 has been released. This implements some changes in tooltips, default "loading" textures for objects, and some other minor features and fixes. 11/15 - 11/21 *A new version of Second Life, Version 1.7.4, will be released on Monday, November 21st. The grid will be down from 6 am to 12 pm (PST) during the update. This update will hopefully fix texture loading, quicktime crashes, and other bugs. Two other changes are the default texture for loading objects, which will now have a noticable edge so you can make out prims while they load, and Tooltips will now only be displayed for objects you can interact with (and avatars), behavior can be reverted to the current behavior by editing Settings.ini somehow. *A new Help Island has been opened for new residents. These islands located adjacent to the Orientation Islands will allow volunteers (Greeters) to help out newbies in a more direct and friendly maner. This is phase one in a greater plan to better help out those in need of it, the rest is slated to come on November 29th with a slue of other goods. *There were some issues with the Mac AutoUpdater this issue has since been resolved. There also seems to be an issue with the World Map updating, this is being worked on and will be fixed as soon as possible (if it hasn't been fixed already). *The dwell issues are coming to a resolution. Previous payments and new payments should be working shortly. The reason for the issues seem to be that the grid being as big as it is, causes the dwell script longer to run. A solution is being worked on. *October Developer Incentive Award Winners have been announced. This months total payout is USD $10,767.34, with the total number of recipients being upped to 110. More about the Developer Incentives can be found here. 11/14 - 11/15 *There are some issues with Group Dividend distribution. LL is working on the issue, currently all money is being held within the group account. There also seems to be issues with other Dwell as well, which is also being worked on. 11/08 - 11/14 *'1.7.2' is schedualed for release Wednesday, November 9th (4 am PST), the grid will be temporarily unavailable during this upgrade which is slated to fix some bugs and issues. LL hopes to have the grid backup by 10 am PST. Check out the announcement. *Jesse Linden has posted a short update on progression and somewhat regression of SL's technology with client and sim FPS, written by Chris Linden. The post goes into slight detail about how framerate has decreased with 1.7, providing graphs as well to illustrate this point. Also he mentions some of the most known crashes at this time, which seem to be ATI OpenGL issues, Quicktime issues, and freeing memory. 10/24 - 11/08 *'1.7' has been released. If you are unable to update through the client you can download it from here. You may run into trouble logging in or performing other activities as the final kinks of release are worked out. The release notes are up for Version 1.7 and added to the archives. *The Lindens are looking for 3 house builders to design 1950's-style suburban homes for an unknown neighborhood project. Check out the contest and rules if you're interested. *Due to upcoming features in 1.7, the Classifieds section of the forums will be closing (exception for New Products has been made). A new feature in 1.7 allows for users to display products in their Profiles and listed in the Find directory, the Lindens feel this makes the Classifieds forum unnecessary. See the forum announcement for more details. *Inspired by the Second Life Community Convention Linden Lab has setup a Meet-Ups and Real Life Events forum for all your real life meet-up needs. Pathfinder Linden's announcement. *A new Liaison has joined the Linden family (October 21st, 2005), his name is Kenny Linden! Be nice if you see him! Forum announcement. 10/21 - 10/24 *'Monday, October 24th' Second Life 1.7 is slated to be released, this means that the grid (world) will be unavailable between 6:00 AM PT to 2:00 PM PT (that's PST). You can read the forum post and release notes on this forum post. The full Release Notes will be added to the wiki once the release is final. 9/6 - 10/21 *In-world donation sites have been setup for helping Hurricane Relief. Visit Waterhead (120,10) and donate what you can. There is also a thread going on small things you can do to help victims. *Burning Life continues to go on strong and a Katrina Benefit has been setup for those with a BL plot that are interested in helping out. Burning Life will continue on untill September 12th. See Jeska's post for more information on the event. *Second Life Basic Accounts are now Free to new residents! Jeska Linden made the announcement today, only new users can get free accounts and after they get the first one any others after are charged with the usual $9.95. All other accounts remain the same, for more details see the forum thread. *A Community Team Round Table with Residents has been announced. This group consisting of several community oriented Lindens will hold meetings to discuss various community related topics. Meetings will be held the first Wednesday of every month 4-5pm (PST) in Ambleside (58,108). You can sign up for the newsletter which will contain notices of meetings and transcripts after the meetings by sending an email to the address provided in the forum thread. *Philip Linden announced that they will be reducing stipend bonuses you recieve for Ratings (NOT your base stipend) down to 50%, then later finaly taking them out all together. There was a Town Hall 8/30/05 held discussing this topic. *Second Life will once again open its doors to Real Life campuses and classes. These are groups of students who are researching virtual worlds or subject matters related to them, and gives them the chance to learn "hands on" what it's all about. An FAQ can be found here about the Campus project. *Second Life 1.7 Preview is now available, this means residents can test it out and help LL find bugs to fix before the actual release. Find out more at the Preview page and discuss 1.7 on the 1.7 forums. *Winners of the lottary for a spot at Luna Oaks and Busy Ben's have been announced! Winners recieve space to put their latest creations on display for purchase. *A minor change in Educational Event support has been made. Residents can now recieve L$ for 2 educational events a day. 8/23 - 9/6 *Relay For Life has begun and will continue through this weekend (closing ceremonies start at 11:30 am, August 28th)! The large event supported by The American Cancer Society features a wide array of activities within the vehicle sims to raise awareness of cancer. Relay For Life is based off a Real Life event of the same name and many of the activities emulate those done at the RL RFL. Activities such as Luminaria Lighting, campground setups, and of course a relay walk are being held as well as several other events. This marks not only the first Relay For Life in a virtual world, but also the first time a large terrain carving spanning 6 sims has happened (spelling out "HOPE")! *Burning Life returns to Second Life for its third run! This annual event in the spirit of the real life event "Burning Man" allows residents to express their creative side in Linden run sims. Reisdents could enter a raffle in which winners will be chosen for plots, the raffle has since been closed and winners will be announced shortly.. See Jeska's post for more information. *On Linden Lab's international front, content bidding is open for developers to create international themed and inspired content. Everything from shirts to Welcome Area designs are being called for. Main focus currently on Japanese, Korean, and German styles. *A new Developer Directory project has been started by LL. This Directory would list chosen submissions of developers who were looking to be hired for their talents. Note that not all submissions are guarenteed to be listed in the directory. *Linden Lab developers are hard at work implementing Mono in SL. Mono could potentialy help improve the LSL and general scripting toolset. Providing faster handling of scripts and the possibility of extending LSL or adding additional programming languages to SL, Mono will be a nice improvement. *A little late in the news of this, but on August 3rd Second Life passed the 40,000 user mark! With no stop in sight SL continues to grow, already past 42,000 today, it seems to be on a steady trend as charts can show you. 8/15 - 8/23 *Robin Linden has announced a new expirement Linden Lab is trying, that of which allowing users to select where they go after Orientation Island. Users as of today have the choice of going to the Ahern Welcome Area, a Sandbox, Abbotts Aerodrome, or The Edge. The announcement can be found here and a thread discussion on it can be found here. (Note: The Edge has since been replaced with The Shelter as a fourth choice.) *Winners of the 2005 Game Developer competition have been announced! 1st Place "Primmies" by Jeffrey Gomez, 2nd Place "EVA" by Gary Bukowski, 3rd Place "The Board" by Tiger Crossing. See more details on the forums. *The Second Life Trailer Movie Contest has been extended to a deadline of September 5th. Explination on why and details about the contest are here. *Ginsu Linden (soft g like in gin-and-tonic) has posted that LL will soon be looking for more foriegn language speaking Lindens (specificly, Japanese, Korean, and German). If you can speak any of those languages and are interested in helping out check out the thread! *Lose your Benshee or not get one? Well you're in luck! A kiosk has been setup that will give them out to users who qualify to recieve one. *The deadline for developing the SLTV website (http://secondlifetv.com) has ended on August 15th. Winners or entries have not been announced, but the original posting can be viewed here. 8/2 - 8/15 *The winners of the Log-A-Thon contest will be announced on August 5th, names will be posted on the forums. See the forums for details. *Nigel Linden is looking for submissions by residents for train stations for the great SL Railroad in the northern continent. There are 5 plots of land and each one is awarded to a different avatar or group if a proposal is accepted. See the forum post for more details. *Linden Lab will be at Siggraph (July 31st to August 4th). If you want to go visit or check out the event see more about it here. *The First Annual SL Resident Conference is slated to take place in NYC (Sunday Oct 9th)! If you would like to attend check out the forum thread. *Pathfinder Linden wants some tips and help on how to improve "Pathfinder's Picks". Pathfinder's Picks is a notecard of selected interesting places for residents to check out. Forum thread. *David Parks and Jeffrey Ventrella have been signed to work with SL. News was announced on Cory Linden's blog. Both are very talented and intellectual folks, so it should be exciting to see what they do for SL! 7/27 - 8/2 *1.6.9 has been released, view the notes here. Some are having issues with the auto-updater, you can manualy download and install from the downloads page. *'July 31st' is the new date for the Log-A-Thon, where all residents of SL are encouraged to log on and help lag the grid! Along with the new date for the event it was also announced that prizes will be given away at random to anyone who logs in for it. See the forum post for details! *Economic Town Hall with Tbone Linden was a success! You can view the transcript here. *Philip Linden has posted a statement pertaining to the recent hack/exploit of the SL client. *Feedback is wanted on a potential feature. The feature would allow users to create their own last names. This would be usefull for families and/or companies in large part, as well as individual users looking for a change or more uniqeuness. The thread here has more details and is where you can give your own input. *Testing of the in-world communication and infastructure, "InfoNet" created by Squagmire Stravinsky from The Learning Center (TLC), is wanted by LL for potential use for Linden announcements. You can use public terminals to help run this test as well as use the TLC itself. This thread has more information as well as locations on where terminals can be found. The Learning Center (TLC) is also part of the Education Senate which has a website here. *A new international toll-free number has been made to get in contact with LL. There are three different numbers depending on where you're calling from, so check out the announcement. *The Second Life client was hacked to allow some users to gain visual access to any script. Linden Lab has since fixed the exploit and released an update to fix the problem (see Version 1.6.8). Damage has been done to a large group of scripters, but future issues hopefully will not occure. The thread concerning this hack can be found here. 7/19 - 7/27 *'Wednesday, July 27th, 6 am to 12 (noon) pm (PST)', the grid will be down for an update, 1.6.9. See the forum post for the release notes. Release notes will be added to the wiki when the client is officialy released. *'Thursday, July 21st at 2 PM (PST)' a economy Town Hall will be held with Tbone Linden. The town hall will be in Brampton as well as in several other repeater events. The forum post gives more information. *A massive grid stress-test is to be held on the 24th. Linden Lab is asking everyone to login and help stress the server to see how much it can take. Read more on the forum post here. 6/28 - 7/18 *A Town Hall was held by Philip Linden to answer questions about the new Land Auction and Private Island changes. Besides the reposting of the log here at the wiki you can also find it here on the forums. *Video Linden goes live and provides potential residents, as well as residents stuck at work or too lazy to login a way to get a view into the world that is Second Life. See more info about it on Jeff Linden's forum post here, inclueding rules of things NOT to do. *Pathfinder Linden is looking for resident sculptures and illustrations to put on display. Nothing will be sold or given away, just displayed for all to see. Read more in Pathfinder's thread. *Show and Tell makes a big come back and promises more! A successfull night of a show and tell event has prompted Misty Rhodes to continue on the event for more nights. Success story here! *In a thread about some rude behavior at the Welcome Area, Robin Linden makes a statement about what can be done to help as well as giving a clue as to a potential future feature for SL. Robin's post can be viewed here. *Andale Charming made a post calling out to all those non-US time zoned residents to perhaps get together for some sort of group or party or island. So check it out if you're feeling lonely when the grid is somewhat empty! 6/18 - 6/28 *'Tommorow June 29th 2005' Philip Linden is holding a Town Hall to discuss the latest changes in land prices that Robin Linden announced earlier today/tonight (28th). The town hall will be at the Waterhead stage at an undisclosed time, but probably between 12-3 PM PST (as most usualy are). *'June 23rd' is Second Life's 2nd birthday! To celebrate the Lindens are throwing a big bash starting at 3 PM PST in Bethel, Brilliant, Fortuna, and Georgean. For more information check out Pathfinder Linden's post on the Forums. *SL's most infamous user Prokofy Neva has been permanently banned from all forums but the classified sections. Immediately afterwards, new forum regulations went into effect. Ulrika Zugzwang has been since been served with a formal warning as one of the first users to be disciplined under the new system. Policy Discussion *TrannyPet Barmy - the creator of the "Hand of Satan", "DBomber", and other potentialy TOS violating weaponry has been permabanned. The ban is suspected to be placed due to the "DBomber" object which falls under the "unsolicited spam" and "interfering with a users ability to enjoy the world" sections of the TOS (section 5.1 - (vii), (viii), and (x)) and CS (2 and 3) (The object would send an extroadinary ammount of notecards and/or dialog windows to a targeted user). As a side effect it also caused issues on the servers themselves. A full account of the experience from TP Barmy's point of view can be seen here. *'21 June' - There was a Town Hall with James Linden on Tuesday, June 21 at 3 PM PST, in Brampton (112, 148) to discuss the upcoming embedded web browser in SL. Forum thread Category:News Archives